Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Crawling

It is amazing how in the real world that time seems to fly by. I know that normally I find myself turning around and being amazed that yet again it was a drill weekend (a good way to mark the month since that used to my definition of a busy week... doing my normal job, heading off to packed drill weekends and then heading into work on Monday. That was all before I encountered the 12 hours, 7 days a week schedule).

We are scheduled to return from our deployment early. We kind of lucked out, in that the Army decided to replace us early (now I know what a placeholder feels like). We are already deep into planning for the RIP (Relief In Place), pretty much we have almost been doing that preparation since we conducted out TOA (Transfer Of Authority) and took this place over. I know that lots of us already have the visions of our reunions dancing around in heads, it serves as a wonderful motivator.

We all have a countdown somewhere in proximity to us (most of us use a computer program, some clever people even have a drawing with a number of Lobsters (we have it every Fiday), one each for the remaining weeks). I am already planning my downtime after deployment (I envision taking 2-3 weeks off). Or as a I have described it, #OccupyMyCouch.

Again I will not go into specifics, as it is possible for the bad guys to utilize that information to time their attacks to take advantage of of the inevitable turbulance that occurs when one group replaces another.

I can already visualize finally seeing my fiance, family and friends again (and maybe drinking that celebratory beer).